![]() ![]() I was always dead last in youth basketball practice windsprints.īut I decided to run a marathon. I know what I know about God because of the Sunday school teachers, small group leaders, mission trip volunteers, spiritual aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas I’ve encountered throughout my life in the Church. We know what kind of God God is because of the Christian community that surrounds us. In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III determined that day should be November 1.įrom it’s earliest days, the Church understood the communal and family nature of the human experience. But after 400 years, there were more martyrs than days of the year, so it was decided to take one day of the year to specially remember the saints that had died. They began commemorating martyrs with special days. ![]() In the days of the early church, followers of Christ found themselves at odds with the political powers. And that is our subversive hope as a Christian community. There’s no getting around it.īut resurrection is real, too. About this radical compassion of Jesus, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.”ĭeath is real. It’s deeply significant that the story recording the weeping of Jesus is the Lazarus story. We don’t have to be okay when loved ones die. Pain and grief are acceptable responses to death. There was no euphemism to side-step the pain and grief that left. She did not “pass away.” She wasn’t “called home.” She didn’t “go to be with the Lord.” We didn’t “lose” her. Notice I wrote that she “died.” As a Christian, a person of Resurrection, I believe that how we talk about other Christians who have died matters. The way we talk about death and the way we celebrate the saints form and shape us as a community on mission. I’d never spoken at a funeral before.Īll Saints Day is an annually reminder about how to talk well about Christian death. My father-in-law asked me to speak at the funeral. November 1 takes me back to that intensive care unit, snow crusted around the window panes, and we’re a family of six huddled around the hospital bed, and we watched her last breath. It’s not quite Back to the Future, but I’ll take it. We’re drawn into a closeness with something that happened in the past. It’s what we’re doing subconsciously when we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, too. This is what we’re acknowledging when we celebrate holidays (i.e., holy days) and engage the Christian calendar with times like Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and All Saints Day. Thus, he writes, “Good Friday 1998 is closer in a way to the original day of the Crucifixion than mid-summer’s day 1997.” But there’s something that bends similar events together. Philosopher Charles Taylor suggests there is a “higher time” that re-orders and warps “secular time.” So-called “secular time” marches lock-step in line, this-before-that. All Saint’s Day takes me to late February and early March 2015. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |